Читать книгу My Life - Isadora Duncan - Страница 13

Table of Contents

The whole family was now in New York. We had managed to take a studio with a bathroom, and as I wanted it to be free of all furniture in order to have space to dance in, we bought five spring mattresses. We hung curtains all round the walls of the studio, and in the daytime the mattresses were put up on end. We slept on the mattresses and had no beds, only a quilt over us. In this studio Elizabeth started school, as in San Francisco. Augustin had joined a theatrical company and was seldom at home. He was mostly on the road. Raymond ventured into journalism. In order to meet expenses, we rented the studio by the hour to teachers of elocution, music, singing, etc. But as there was only one room, this necessitated that the whole family went for a walk, and I remember trudging along Central Park in the snow, trying to keep warm. Then we would go back and listen at the door. There was one elocution teacher who always taught the same poem. It was "Mabel, little Mabel, with her face against the pane" and he used to repeat it with a pathos quite exaggerated. The pupil would repeat it in an expressionless voice and the teacher used to exclaim:

"But can't you feel the pathos of it? Can't you just feel it?"

At this time Augustin Daly had the idea of bringing over the "Geisha." He put me in, to sing in a quartette. And I had never been able to sing a note in my life! The other three said that I always put them out of tune, so I used to stand sweetly by with open mouth, but not uttering a sound. Mother used to say that it was extraordinary that the others should make such awful faces when they sang, whilst I never lost my sweet expression.